Theodore R Schatzki
Biographic Data
| ID | 372902 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Theodore R Schatzki |
| GIVEN NAMES | Theodore R |
| FAMILY NAME | Schatzki |
| SIGNATURE | SCHATZKI T R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kentucky |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5200-8774 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 385 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Exposure to Opposing Views on Social Media: A Critical Analysis of Studies, Theory, and the Medium
The authors declare no conflicts of interest
The Changing Forms of Social Phenomena Today
Agency
How Do Unsustainable Practices Remain Dominant? A Practice Theory Reinterpretation of Gramsci
Sociological studies of sustainable transformation have highlighted the relevance of 'unequal' and 'uneven' transformation dynamics. We argue that a practice-based approach provides far more insight into such unequal dynamics than currently recognized. We re-interpret the political concepts of agonism, antagonism and historic bloc that Gramsci used to analyse domination in order to theorize practice constellations and dynamics that are responsibl…
Spatial troubles with teaching under Covid-19
This essay explores the multifaceted underpinning that spaces provide to social affairs, in particular, educating. It does this by examining a particular episode, involving spaces of educating, that reveals this support through its undermining: the sudden rushes to home and online teaching that university instructors in the US underwent in the spring of 2020. Part one of the essay outlines a practice theoretical account of the spaces of social li…
Processes, Life, and the Practice Plenum
Process approaches form a minoritarian vocation in contemporary social thought. The concept of process is regularly used in unconsidered ways that are continuous with untutored uses outside academic texts. But there is relatively little detailed engagement with, or focused conceptual development centered on, the concept—despite a recent burst of process analyses, above all in organization studies and in corners of sociology and geography that eng…
Social Change in a Material World: A Précis
This essay offers a precis of the author's recently published book of the same name. It discusses (1) the book's claims about events, processes, and changes, (2) its theses about the nature of social changes and the significance of the material world for the constitution of social phenomena and social changes, (3) the book's principal claim that social changes arise from nexuses of activity chains and material occurrences, and (4) the implication…
Social Change in a Material World
Social Change in a Material World offers a new, practice theoretical account of social change and its explanation. Extending the author’s earlier account of social life, and drawing on general ideas about events, processes, and change, the book conceptualizes social changes as configurations of significant differences in bundles of practices and material arrangements. Illustrated with examples from the history of bourbon distillation and the form…
Social Change in a Material World: How Activity and Material Processes Dynamize Practices
Questions of Practice in Philosophy and Social Theory
Humanistic theory for more than the past 100 years is marked by extensive attention to practice and practices. Two prominent streams of thought sharing this focus are pragmatism and theories of practice. This volume brings together internationally prominent theorists to explore key dimensions of practice and practices on the background of parallels and points of contact between these two traditions. The contributors all are steeped in one or both…
Theory and conceptual centrality in Bourdieu
The Nexus of Practices: Connections, constellations, practitioners
Materialität und soziales Leben
Praxistheorie als flache Ontologie
Materialität: Herausforderungen für die Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften
Entgegen der Vorstellung einer im Wesentlichen sprachlich-symbolischen Verfasstheit von Kultur und Gesellschaft vermittelt dieser Band Einblicke in die materielle Beschaffenheit und Bedingtheit menschlichen Handelns und menschlicher Existenz. Hierfür behandeln die Autoren die Rolle und Bedeutung von Artefakten und Materialien, von Zeichen und Texten, von Licht, Tönen und Natur. Das Ergebnis ist eine Rehabilitierung des Materiellen in den Sozial- …
A Primer on Practices
As the title indicates, this chapter is a primer on practices. It begins by discussing practice theory generally but mostly presents my own ideas. The topics addressed are practices, activities, and social phenomena, with special attention to temporality and the unfolding of practices. The chapter concludes with comments about conducting research on practices. My goal is to provide practice theoretical stimulation to readers interested in practic…
Materiality and Social Life
An important issue in contemporary social theory is how social thought can systematically take materiality into account. This article suggests that one way social theory can do so is by working with an ontology that treats materiality as part of society. The article presents one such ontology, according to which social phenomena consist in nexuses of human practices and material arrangements. This ontology (1) recognizes three ways materiality is…
On Organizations as they Happen
The essay examines what organizations are as they happen. It first argues that the happening of an organization has two basic components: the performance of its constituent actions and practices and the occurrence of events whereby its material arrangements causally support these activities. Equating the idea of something as it happens with that of something in real time, the essay then examines two kinds of real time in which organizations occur…
The time of activity
Peripheral Vision: The Sites of Organizations
This essay introduces a new form of social ontology and sketches its bearings on the analysis of organizations. The essay begins by contrasting the two social ontological camps — individualism and societism — into which social theory has been divided since its inception. It then describes the new approach, called site ontology, according to which social life is tied to a context (site) of which it is inherently a part. Examples of such ontologies…
Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory
Reply to ‘Rethinking Social Criticism: Rules, Logic and Internal Critique’
Human Universals and Understanding a Different Socioculture
Nature and Technology in History
This essay sketches an expanded theoretical conception of the roles of nature and technology in history, one that is based on a social ontology that does not separate nature and society. History has long been viewed as the realm of past human action. On this conception, nature is treated largely as an Other of history, and technology is construed chiefly as a means for human fulfillment. There is no history of nature, and the history of technolog…
A New Societist Social Ontology
This article delineates a new type of social ontology—site ontology—and defends a particular version of that type. The first section establishes the distinctiveness of site ontologies over both individualist ontologies and previous societist ones. The second section then shows how site ontologies elude two pervasive criticisms, that of incompleteness directed at individualism and that of reification leveled at societism. The third section defends…
Materiality and Social Life
An important issue in contemporary social theory is how social thought can systematically take materiality into account. This article suggests that one way social theory can do so is by working with an ontology that treats materiality as part of society. The article presents one such ontology, according to which social phenomena consist in nexuses of human practices and material arrangements. This ontology (1) recognizes three ways materiality is…
Practices and Actions A Wittgensteinian Critique of Bourdieu and Giddens
This article criticizes Bourdieu's and Giddens's overintellectualizing accounts of human activity on the basis of Wittgenstein's insights into practical under standing. Part 1 describes these two theorists' conceptions of a homology between the organization of practices (spatial-temporal manifolds of action) and the governance of individual actions. Part 2 draws on Wittgenstein's discussions of linguistic definition and following a rule to critic…
A New Societist Social Ontology
This article delineates a new type of social ontology—site ontology—and defends a particular version of that type. The first section establishes the distinctiveness of site ontologies over both individualist ontologies and previous societist ones. The second section then shows how site ontologies elude two pervasive criticisms, that of incompleteness directed at individualism and that of reification leveled at societism. The third section defends…
Spatial Ontology and Explanation
This paper presents an account of spatial ontology and explanation that highlights a largely ignored dimension of social spatiality: the opening and occupation of places for activity that automatically occurs whenever there is human life. The first part analyzes this space of places on the basis of Heidegger's account of ongoing life, and uses the resulting analysis to describe the spatiality of social formations. The second part analyzes spatial…
Nature and Technology in History
This essay sketches an expanded theoretical conception of the roles of nature and technology in history, one that is based on a social ontology that does not separate nature and society. History has long been viewed as the realm of past human action. On this conception, nature is treated largely as an Other of history, and technology is construed chiefly as a means for human fulfillment. There is no history of nature, and the history of technolog…
The Nature of Social Reality
How Do Unsustainable Practices Remain Dominant? A Practice Theory Reinterpretation of Gramsci
Sociological studies of sustainable transformation have highlighted the relevance of 'unequal' and 'uneven' transformation dynamics. We argue that a practice-based approach provides far more insight into such unequal dynamics than currently recognized. We re-interpret the political concepts of agonism, antagonism and historic bloc that Gramsci used to analyse domination in order to theorize practice constellations and dynamics that are responsibl…
Social Science in Society
Subject, Body, Place
dward Casey's essay stands in a long and distinguished line of phenomenological analyses of human spatiality. Other contributors include Husserl (1970, 1997), Heidegger ([1952] 1971, [1927] 1978), Diirckheim (1932), Lassen (1939), Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 1962), Bollnow (1963), Golz (1970), Kruse (1974), Waldenfels (1985), Casey himself (1993) and, from just outside phenomenology proper, Strauss (1930), Binswanger (1933), Bachelard ([1958] 1964), an…
Wittgenstein and the social context of an individual life
This article argues that two significant implications of Wittgenstein’s writings for social thought are (1) that people are constitutively social beings and (2) that the social context of an individual life is nexuses of practice. Part one concretizes these ideas by examining the constitution of action within practices. It begins by criticizing three arguments of Winch’s that suggest that action is inherently social. It then spells out two argume…
Agency
Elements of a Wittgensteinian philosophy of the human sciences
On Sociocultural Evolution by Social Selection
The essay criticizes an alleged new paradigm for explaining sociocultural change: selectionism. Part one describes the general selectionist explanatory schema, which selectionists claim applies to realms beyond the biological, in particular, the sociocultural. Part two focuses on the way most selectionists, in focusing on cultural change alone, wrongly separate culture from society. Particular atten‐tion is paid to the accounts these selectionist…
Wittgenstein: Mind, Body, and Society
The rationalization of meaning and understanding: Davidson and Habermas
Human Universals and Understanding a Different Socioculture
Postmodernism as Normal Science
Ancient and Naturalistic Themes in Nietzsche's Ethics
L'A. s'erige contre les interpretations modernistes de la morale de Nietzsche et s'attache a montrer la resurrection de la pensee naturaliste des Stoiciens dans les ecrits tardifs du philosophe
The rationalization of meaning and understanding: Davidson and Habermas
Social causality
This paper combines a phenomenological account of the types of causal transaction found in social reality with a critique of two theories, one structuralist and one Marxist, that contravene it. Part I argues that there are three types of causal transaction in social life in addition to physical causal transactions: people bringing about states of affairs by acting, states of affairs bringing about actions by inducing responses, and entities and s…
The Nature of Social Reality
Do Social Structures Govern Action?
Elements of a Wittgensteinian philosophy of the human sciences
Spatial Ontology and Explanation
This paper presents an account of spatial ontology and explanation that highlights a largely ignored dimension of social spatiality: the opening and occupation of places for activity that automatically occurs whenever there is human life. The first part analyzes this space of places on the basis of Heidegger's account of ongoing life, and uses the resulting analysis to describe the spatiality of social formations. The second part analyzes spatial…
Wittgenstein: Mind, Body, and Society
Ancient and Naturalistic Themes in Nietzsche's Ethics
L'A. s'erige contre les interpretations modernistes de la morale de Nietzsche et s'attache a montrer la resurrection de la pensee naturaliste des Stoiciens dans les ecrits tardifs du philosophe
Postmodern Contentions: Epochs, Politics, Space
Postmodernism as Normal Science
Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social
This book addresses key topics in social theory such as the basic structures of social life, the character of human activity, and the nature of individuality. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein, the author develops an account of social existence that argues that social practices are the fundamental phenomenon in social life. This approach offers insight into the social formation of individuals, surpassing and critiquing the existing practice the…
Social practices: A Wittgensteinian approach to human activity and the social
This book addresses key issues in social theory such as the basic structures of social life, the character of human activity, and the nature of individuality. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein, the author develops an account of social existence that argues that social practices are the fundamental phenomenon in social life. This approach, while respecting the multiplicity and heterogeneity emphasized in recent social thought, offers new insight…
Objectivity and Its Other
Practices and Actions A Wittgensteinian Critique of Bourdieu and Giddens
This article criticizes Bourdieu's and Giddens's overintellectualizing accounts of human activity on the basis of Wittgenstein's insights into practical under standing. Part 1 describes these two theorists' conceptions of a homology between the organization of practices (spatial-temporal manifolds of action) and the governance of individual actions. Part 2 draws on Wittgenstein's discussions of linguistic definition and following a rule to critic…
The Social Bearing of Nature
This essay examines how nature pertains to social life. Part I describes the social ontology the essay employs to address this issue. This ontology is of the site variety and is opposed to ontologies of both the individualist and socialist sorts. Part II describes where nature appears in this ontology. Artifacts are differentiated from nature, and much of ?nature? is shown to be second nature, a type of artifact that looks and feels like nature. …
Wittgenstein and the social context of an individual life
This article argues that two significant implications of Wittgenstein’s writings for social thought are (1) that people are constitutively social beings and (2) that the social context of an individual life is nexuses of practice. Part one concretizes these ideas by examining the constitution of action within practices. It begins by criticizing three arguments of Winch’s that suggest that action is inherently social. It then spells out two argume…
On Sociocultural Evolution by Social Selection
The essay criticizes an alleged new paradigm for explaining sociocultural change: selectionism. Part one describes the general selectionist explanatory schema, which selectionists claim applies to realms beyond the biological, in particular, the sociocultural. Part two focuses on the way most selectionists, in focusing on cultural change alone, wrongly separate culture from society. Particular atten‐tion is paid to the accounts these selectionist…
Subject, Body, Place
dward Casey's essay stands in a long and distinguished line of phenomenological analyses of human spatiality. Other contributors include Husserl (1970, 1997), Heidegger ([1952] 1971, [1927] 1978), Diirckheim (1932), Lassen (1939), Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 1962), Bollnow (1963), Golz (1970), Kruse (1974), Waldenfels (1985), Casey himself (1993) and, from just outside phenomenology proper, Strauss (1930), Binswanger (1933), Bachelard ([1958] 1964), an…
The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change
Inspired by Heidegger's concept of the clearing of being, and by Wittgenstein's ideas on human practice, Theodore Schatzki offers a novel approach to understanding the constitution and transformation of social life. Key to the account he develops here is the context in which social life unfolds-the ";site of the social";-as a contingent and constantly metamorphosing mesh of practices and material orders. Schatzki's analysis reveals the advantages…
Social Science in Society
The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change
"Inspired by Heidegger's concept of the clearing of being, and by Wittgenstein's ideas on human practice, Theodore Schatzki offers a novel approach to understanding the constitution and transformation of social life. Key to the account he develops here is the context in which social life unfolds - the "site of the social"--As a contingent and constantly metamorphosing mesh of practices and material orders. Schatzki's analysis reveals the advantag…
Reply to ‘Rethinking Social Criticism: Rules, Logic and Internal Critique’
Human Universals and Understanding a Different Socioculture
Nature and Technology in History
This essay sketches an expanded theoretical conception of the roles of nature and technology in history, one that is based on a social ontology that does not separate nature and society. History has long been viewed as the realm of past human action. On this conception, nature is treated largely as an Other of history, and technology is construed chiefly as a means for human fulfillment. There is no history of nature, and the history of technolog…
A New Societist Social Ontology
This article delineates a new type of social ontology—site ontology—and defends a particular version of that type. The first section establishes the distinctiveness of site ontologies over both individualist ontologies and previous societist ones. The second section then shows how site ontologies elude two pervasive criticisms, that of incompleteness directed at individualism and that of reification leveled at societism. The third section defends…
Sociology (33 works) · Epistemology (31 works) · Philosophy (29 works) · Political science (14 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Social science (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Sociology (7 works)